


we are the angels drowning deep into its blood

by kimaracretak



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Death, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, cities that probably want to eat you, darkfic but with happy lesbians at the end, trees that probably want to eat you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 20:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9401267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Cassandra knows death, hears it in her family's screams and then, deeper, in the silence of the stone walls when enough days have passed that she has no more tears. But she knows the absence of death too, and she tastes it in the blood-soaked ashy air. Something more than Whitestone itself is alive now, pressing up at the earth, and she knows it wants her just as much as Whitestone does.Or; the one where Whitestone reaches for the bones of the last de Rolo child with more than death, and a ranger and her fey trees sayno





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from xandria, 'we are murderers (we all)'
> 
> gimme all the horrorterror whitestone AUs pls and thanks // i behaved in this fandom for like five minutes and it was weird, here are the fey ladies kissing other fey ladies against a tapestry of undead horrorterrors that we all need more of

Whitestone does not die when the Briarwoods come.

Cassandra knows death, hears it in her family's screams and then, deeper, in the silence of the stone walls when enough days have passed that she has no more tears. But she knows the absence of death too, and she tastes it in the blood-soaked ashy air. Something more than Whitestone itself is alive now, pressing up at the earth, and she knows it wants her just as much as Whitestone does.

She walks abandoned hallways and hidden passages, draws the shadows around her in the corners when the new guards pass. There is nothing alive in their eyes yet still they walk, and she remembers the night of the storm: _come in, come in._

Much more than the Briarwoods answered that night, and now they think to never leave.

(She will make them leave. She is a de Rolo, she is all there ever was to ask for, and these living dead will not take her place.)

Cassandra finds her brother, and then three arrows find her back. Facedown in the snow, she watches her blood crawl back to her city's roots, and as the red steadily fades to grey, she manages to smile.

It's funny, really. She always thought breathing would be harder, in the end.

 

*

 

Cassandra wakes in the temple of Pelor and suffocates in the light. She feels more alone than she has ever been in her life, for all that Keeper Yennen won't leave her side.

There is an ache in her bones where her siblings used to rest and a hole in her heart the shape of Whitestone Castle and Cassandra is hollow, so easily filled with the hopes of her people. She lets them look to her, lets them plan, and never once says: _but wasn't it always supposed to be like this?_

In some ways she is a child still, and the walls of the world are not so thick for her. Whatever is rising from the ground has fed on her blood and her family's bodies for hundreds of years, and now she knows enough to welcome it.

It is almost a relief when Delilah closes her hands around Cassandra's and leads her from the battlefield. _I'm so glad you've come home_ , she says.

Cassandra thinks about saying that it isn't her home anymore, that it stopped being her home the night Delilah killed her family. But it would be a lie, she thinks. A year later the city has welcomed its new masters, though the people haven't, and the wind that blows cold off the Alabaster Sierras sings of the broken line between life and death and promises a home, if one that has moved.

She can accept this, for now. She can wait.

There is a family in Whitestone Castle and it _loves_ , breaking worlds and earth alike. It loves Cassandra too, and she is no longer alone.

 

*

 

Delilah does her hair in the mornings, a hundred soft strokes of the brush down her back like Cassandra's mother never did.

 _Darling girl,_  she says, over and over and Cassandra cannot tell how much of the charm in her words is arcane. _Darling girl, you're still a lady. I couldn't take this city from you if I wanted to._

Cassandra believes her, now. Cassandra watches the giants prowl the streets, thin light glinting off the residuum embedded in their skin, and imagines she can still see her siblings' bones under the layers of flesh and enchantments.

She memorises their routes, whispers their names as they pass: _Julius. Vesper. Percival. Oliver. Whitney. Ludwig._  That they are still here, still with Whitestone, with _her,_  is a gift Delilah has given her, and the gratitude spills from her skin again like blood.

Cassandra de Rolo is loved and she does not entirely know by what, and soon she will be old enough to know that she should be afraid of this. For now she sits under the Sun Tree, hands to the ground and eyes fixed on the swaying forms of her older siblings, and waits.

 

*

 

It is years before Delilah and Sylas leave her alone in the castle. Delilah gives her a new set of armour before they leave, straps her into the black and red leathers with deft hands that were never meant to care so much.  _You'll watch, won't you Cassandra?_  Delilah asks, and Cassandra bows her head and whispers _yes, yes._

She feels grown up, feels whole. She sits in the room where her parents once held court, knees pulled up to her chest, and smiles. Cassandra is still a daughter of Whitestone, and it matters no longer that she is a Briarwood and not a de Rolo. The city ever knows its own.

Outside the giants move, and though Cassandra loves them still they feel very far away.

The revolution comes soon after Delilah and Sylas return, and Cassie is not ready. She watches from the windows as the three half-elves — _diplomats from Syngorn_ , Delilah had sighed, and retired to her rooms to decide how best to deal with they who were not so unimportant that they could simply be kept — fight their way through the city.

Ludwig falls first, and it is when Cassandra realises that she has no more desire to mourn him more, she picks up her daggers and slips down to the tunnels to wait.

She does not have long to wait for their arrival, nor long to wait til the battle is nearly over, Sylas scattered to mist and Delilah bleeding out in Cassandra's arms as the bodies on the wall writhe in horrid broken unity. The druid stands with her arms raised, calling down a dome of daylight around them, and for the first time in years the light does not hurt.

The twins argue in whispers only a sibling would understand, while Delilah fists her hands in Cassandra's cloak and whispers, _you could have been my daughter._

 _I know,_  is all Cassandra can say, because Delilah never would understand that she lost Cassandra the moment she lost Whitestone. The city had her first and will have her again, and anything Delilah could offer only temporary.

When the ranger draws her bow for Delilah's heart, Cassandra nods.

When the tree bursts from Delilah's corpse, Cassandra _screams._

 

*

 

Vax's Raven Queen is unlike any god Cassandra has ever known, and that of itself is a comfort. He watches over the dead, and the dead walk in fewer and fewer places.

Cassandra stands next to Vex on the castle roof and watches as the last of her siblings fall, and though it is a loss that twists her heart Vex holds her hands and promises her that the trees will talk, the trees will love her too.

 _They love me,_  she says. _They love me and my brother and Keyleth, and they will love you too. You will grow._

Keyleth presses Cassandra's palm to the Sun Tree, and together they feel it awaken, drawing up and up and _up_  from the underground. They feel the ziggurat awake as well.

Vax gives her a dagger so unlike Delilah's, and he says, _I believe in second chances, and I believe we will all know when it is your time for real._  Cassandra does not tell him that she is already on her third chance, or perhaps her fourth.

Vex's lips are burning against her forehead, and Cassandra's blood stirs, remembering what it is to want for desire, rather than survival.

 

*

 

The trees grow quicker than Whitestone. The people are cautious, coming out of the long night, and Keyleth and Vex build fields and forests with an almost panicked edge. Cassandra never asks from who Vex's trees grow: she is life and life and life after all, for all she has touched and loved death, and that is enough.

 _I know what it's like to have only my brother_ , Vex confesses to her, late nights over wine. _I think I would go mad alone. I understand why you let her keep the giants._

Cassandra is not sure she _didn't_  go mad, cradled in the stone-and-skin constructed hands of her siblings or in Delilah's arms when the nightmares were worst. Instead she says, _it doesn't matter, anymore_ , and Vex is kind enough not to name her lie.

It is a fragile, imperfect square: Vex and Keyleth, Vax and the Raven Queen, and in the middle of them all Cassandra who should have died and Whitestone which doesn't quite live. The world is still hungry, and Cassandra is still loved and after all —

— after all, the only changed thing is Vex's mouth, soft and warm under hers, and the difference means everything.

 

*

 

Still spins the zigguraut below the castle but tight in Vex's arms behind Fenthras' woven branches where Cassandra cannot see it and it cannot see her, she breathes.


End file.
